1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to computers, and more particularly to apparatus, method and computer program product embodiments for implementing virtual keyboard video mouse (KVM) functionality for a target computer system using a portable computer.
2. Description of the Related Art
Computers and computer systems are found in a variety of settings in today's society. Computing environments and networks may be found at home, at work, at school, in government, and in other settings. Computing environments increasingly manage data in one or more datacenter environments apart from the interface that computer users typically associate. In many cases, the storage environments are located across wide area networks (WANs), in which data is sent to/received from the data system located remotely from the host. Datacenters are facilities used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage subsystems. They generally include redundant or backup power supplies, redundant data communications connections, environmental controls, and security devices.
A datacenter may occupy one room of a building, one or more floors, or an entire building. Most of the equipment is often in the form of servers mounted in 19-inch rack cabinets, which are usually placed in single rows forming corridors between them. This allows personnel to access to the front and rear of each cabinet. In a typical data center environment, each of the rack mount servers shares a connection to a keyboard video mouse (KVM) switch. The user toggles the switch in order to connect to a desired server.
Use of traditional KVM switches presents occasional challenges, however. For example, if more than one person needs to use the console to which the KVM switch is connected, however, the first user must finish his/her task first. Only then may the second user toggle the switch and connect to a second server or system. In addition to the foregoing, each system must be connected via a dongle and cable form factor, and daisy-chained and connected to the shared KVM switch. This situation leads to disorganization among the server cables at the back of the rack. One false connection may lead to losing a connection to the other servers daisy-chained to that particular connector. Finally, the user must implement a separate KVM switch (including an attached keyboard, video, and mouse) for each rack in the datacenter environment.
Alternatives to conventional KVM functionality may reduce these issues, such as use of a virtual network computing (VNC) protocol for remote connection to a particular server. However, VNC also poses challenges on occasion. For example, if a particular server is booting into an operating system, it is impossible to remotely connect to the server using VNC in order for a user to determine what is happening in that server during the boot cycle. In those situations, only a physically connected keyboard, video display, and mouse allow the user visibility into the server and the ability to take an appropriate action.